I will be doing a short half hour DJ set tomorrow (Friday 26th October) at the Illustrated London Noise event - part of the Comica festival. I’ll have an early go at playing other people’s music before leaving it to the professionals. Later in the evening I’ll be sketching people in the bar and giving the results away should people want them. The folks behing Le Gun magazine will also be doing animations and murals throughout. It starts at 8pm and is £4 to get in. Below is the image I drew for the flyer, followed by the final flyer (by the organisers of the event) with all the crucial information I neglected to mention…

So, somehow I managed to complete the 24 hour comic within 24 hours. I’ve scanned it in and left it pretty much untouched in terms of spelling errors and the like. Editing it in that way seems to go against the principles of the thing. I have, however, made the colours sync up in photoshop. Some of my pens ran out forcing me to adopt different coloured pens during the process. Felt a shame to not correct this. I have to say, it’s fairly bad but I’m just quite elated I managed to make it though to the finishline. Let alone make anything readable.

Was it worth it? I certainly feel the challenge was a useful learning curve that has made me question how I produce comics normally. We’ll see how this affects my work over the next few months…

I may publish the comic later - as part of my anthology collection next year.

And here’s my very own 24 hour comic completion certificate…

Starting at 3pm tomorrow afternoon (Saturday 20th October) and finishing Sunday at 3pm, I’ll be attempting to write, draw and complete a 24 page comic in 24 hours. It’s an organised 24 hour comic event taking place at the ICA as part of the Comica festival. You can come by and watch me sweat, or just turn up an hour earlier to watch the talk by Jeffrey Lewis. Which, to be honest, may be more entertaining than watching me go slowly insane while sitting at a desk.

I feel tired and my hands hurt just thinking about it so do pop along and show some support if you’re at a loose end. I’ll upload the results sometime in the next couple of weeks when I get a chance.
For more information, visit the 24 hour comic website, read the rules, or visit the ICA website.

Click here for a lovely pdf list of all the Comica events over the next couple of months.

Back in June I was invited, alongside three other London-based comic artists, to spend ten days in the Polish city of Lodz. There, we collaborated with Polish comic artists to produce the second issue of ‘City Stories’ (the first issue was a Russian/Polish pairing). The recent comic festival in Lodz saw the launch of the book and the results of our endeavours. The cover image of the book, in all it’s three dimensional holographic glory (which is hard to tell in this picture of course) is below:

The story I worked on - with Polish artist Michal Bedkowski - follows. Michal wrote the concept and coloured the pages. My job was the black and white artwork. I attempted a very different approach to my usual comic style this time. No cross-hatching, just harsh, angular lines which were meant to suggest an East European feel. There are a couple of colouring mishaps (the character’s eye on page two was originally drawn closed) that weren’t picked up on during the emailing process, but overall I’m pretty pleased with how it turned out. I’ll post my black and white originals up here for comparison.

Here’s some artwork I recently finished for the forthcoming debut EP of Broadcast 2000. You can hear his music here and here. The following images constitute the cover, back cover, and tracklisting - although I would imagine this is all rather obvious. The packaging of the cd was also my design - as soon as it’s back from the printers, i’ll post an image of it here.

A couple of months ago, I was asked by a record company who manage a musician named Yoav to illustrate a comic version of his biography for a press release. In the end, it was decided that a comic might not suit his style quite as much as they anticipated.  The files have been sitting on my computer ever since, but it feels like a waste not to give them some sort of exposure, so here they are…

The large areas of empty space were for where the final text would eventually appear.

The second of my monthly columns for the UK small press website IndieReview is now online. Have a read and let me know what you think…

I’m a comic artist, get me out of this maligned vocation!

Other News… 

I’ll be attending the Polish Comic Festival in Lodz this weekend. Not quite sure what to expect but I’ll be launching the second issue of the City Stories project which I contributed to in July. The work will be available to read on this site when I get back.

I’m also going to be involved in some of the Comica events at the ICA over the next month or so. Firstly, I’ll be attempting to produce a 24 page comic in 24 hours (read more about this here). Secondly, I’ll be selling my comics at the Comica Comiket. And thirdly, I’ll be taking part in the Illustrated London Noise event. All to be confirmed but will keep you posted.

The Comica this year looks like it’ll be fantastic. Make sure you’re there…